The American River Music Festival is Sept. 12, 13 and 14 at Henningsen Lotus Park, 950 Lotus Road in Lotus. The park sits on the South Fork of the American River — perfect for a festival celebrating music and moving water. The festival, now in its eighth year, offers a yin and yang mix of […]

El Dorado County is a place defined by its history. We embrace the past and nearly anything that reflects it. Don’t believe it? Take a drive. Our backroads are altars to the past. We revere old stone buildings. Rusty farm implements are proudly displayed for passersby. Sepia-toned hay barns topped with corrugated steel roofs glow […]

Austin Collie is fighting for his professional football life, vying for a spot on a San Francisco 49ers team that many believe will return to the Super Bowl next January. The former Oak Ridge standout is now 27. He gained a reputation for hard work, dependability and intelligence with the Indianapolis Colts in 2009, a […]

The largest implementation measure of the 2004 General Plan will soon enter the hearing process alongside four major western El Dorado County residential development projects. County supervisors hint that they want a “time-out,” but don’t want to deny anyone’s due process. With that backdrop, the number of approved parcels in the 2004 General Plan and […]

Measure Y authors Bill Center and Jim Moore argue that large residential developments currently in the approval process fail to create jobs, which is reason-enough to oppose them. In fact, the Marble Valley proposal has 42 freeway-adjacent acres set aside for a possible corporate campus. Center blames the large residential developers for forcing commercial buildings […]

Raft resort owner, former supervisor and slow-growth superhero Bill Center blames El Dorado County’s exurban sprawl on 40 years on pro-growth supervisors and weak planning. He points to the 1996 General Plan as an example. “Right in the preamble … it said that gridlock traffic was an acceptable tradeoff for economic growth,” he said, shaking […]

Bill Center and Jim Moore became household names in El Dorado County politics during the decade straddling the millennium, shaping public opinion and policy with a growth-inhibiting ballot initiative, lawsuits both real and threatened, all executed with deft and sometimes ruthless political moxie. Recently the former El Dorado County supervisor and a Democratic pollster have […]